Protecting Your Hybrid Cloud – What You Need to Know

The Growth of Hybrid Clouds

Businesses have experienced an unprecedented digital disruption in the past ten years. The arrival of the commercial Internet in the early nineties and the dawn of web 2.0 in 2004 which created the social web, has created an environment where the rate of change in the digital space is exponential and only getting faster.

Businesses adapting to this frenetic environment have embraced cloud platforms which have enabled them to rapidly deploy products and services to meet growing customer demand. Multi-cloud environments have enabled organisations to move workloads from on-premise to public clouds and back again as demand waxed and waned.

There is no doubt that the flexibility inherent in hybrid clouds is beneficial to business. However, managing a multi-cloud environment is complex and challenging if you rely on traditional unidimensional solutions. Securing data and ensuring it is protected requires technology which is multi-cloud aware to ensure your organisational data is secure, backed up and if the need arises, rapidly and easily recoverable. Traditional backup solutions built in the pre-cloud era just do not have the features you need to protect your data in a cloud-first world.

Data Protection in a Hybrid Cloud Environment

Safety, security and privacy are the cornerstones of a hybrid-cloud data protection strategy which has two primary objectives. Firstly, data needs to be backed up to protect organisations against data loss incidents and secondly, data needs to be protected at its multiple storage locations and as it traverses multiple environments. The solution to this challenge can be complex but if certain steps are taken and the right technology deployed, hybrid-cloud data protection can be accomplished and managed.

Planning

A hybrid cloud means your data could be stored on-premise or on a public cloud platform. Planning your data storage before deploying your applications will ensure you have the necessary information you need to implement a comprehensive and robust data protection solution for your data.

If you will be storing data in multiple disparate locations, Veeam has solutions which integrate into many of the leading public cloud platform providers including: Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, IBM cloud and managed cloud providers who have established partnerships and deployments of Veeam data protection solutions.

Review Before You Deploy

Not all cloud platforms are created equal. Before creating a hybrid cloud with a public cloud service provider, prudence dictates that some due diligence is necessary.

Public cloud providers must make significant investments in security technologies as their livelihoods depend on it. Reviewing the security features of your chosen cloud provider to ensure they have the necessary measures in place to protect your data will give you the peace of mind that your data is secure. In addition, you also need to ensure the services and applications you want to deploy to their platform are supported and can be seamlessly integrated.

Data Retention and Encryption

The length of time you retain data is directly proportional to the level of risk you bear. Compliance and governance standards often dictate the minimum amount of time data needs to be retained for. Once this time constraint has passed, you should look to archive or destroy data. Not only will this minimise your risk, it will also lower costs and simplify the management of your multiple environments.

Finally, data must be encrypted in transit and at rest. This is not only advisable for any data being stored or transmitted via a hybrid cloud, it is good practice to ensure your data is encrypted everywhere. Phishing attacks, application vulnerabilities and other threats target your organisation every day. Adding an extra layer of encrypted protection goes a long way in ensuring your data is private and secure should a system ever suffer a data breach.

Hybrid Cloud with Digital Sense

A business continuity plan is built by following a process which starts with analysing your business. This analysis helps businesses understand each of their services, the dependencies on these services, and which parts of the business generate the most revenue. Coincidentally, this is the identical information an organisation needs when it seeks to plan, develop and execute a plan for business growth.

In addition, they are Veeam partners and can offer you the necessary backup and recovery integration you need to ensure your data is protected, available and secure. With high-speed recovery, verified recoverability and complete visibility, their hybrid cloud data protection service is a comprehensive world-class solution which is simple to get up and running and easy to use.

Read about Data Backup in a Multi-Cloud World:

One of the benefits of a multi-cloud world is you have the freedom to choose the best platform for your application or service. However, protecting your data can be very challenging. Find out more in our article: How to Backup Data in a Multi-cloud World.

Digital Sense and Veeam

Digital Sense has leading solutions which are able to manage data protection across all environments, be they ON-PREMISE, HYBRID, DEDICATED AND PUBLIC CLOUD. They are proficient in delivering high availability for mission-critical environments, whilst protecting customer IP and confidential information.

To find out more about how Digital Sense and Veeam are working together to ensure your business’s digital is always on: